


A Cup a Day

by Shergar



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Coffee, Crack, Don't Mess With Alec Before Coffee, Gay Disaster Alec Lightwood, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29747721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shergar/pseuds/Shergar
Summary: Alec's coffee mug has gone missing. Someone is going to pay.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 10
Kudos: 114





	A Cup a Day

**Author's Note:**

> Cassie mentioned that Magnus and Alec got each other coffee mugs for Christmas and well, here we are.

Seven-thirty AM Monday morning was way too early to consider murder but Alec Lightwood was already there. Someone had taken his coffee mug.

Not everyone in the office left their mug in the cabinet above the sink. Hell, only a handful of people on the second floor did that - most preferring to take their mugs back with them to their desk. Alec, however, had a place for everything in his office, and his empty coffee mug gathering dust did not fit in that plan. Cups went in cabinets, not on desks. 

For the most part, everyone knew which much belonged to who and didn’t bother them.  _ Everyone _ knew that the black, definitely larger than normal one belonged to Alec and knew to stay far, far away if they enjoyed remaining on this mortal plane. 

Alec was certainly not expecting his mug to be missing so he was more than a little bit shocked when he opened the cabinet like he did every morning to find no black coffee mug in sight.

He audibly growled, scaring a poor intern who had been at the vending machine half to death, before angrily grabbing one of the paper cups they kept by the machine and pouring himself a cup. He  _ hated _ using the paper cups because they half the size of a normal cup of coffee. Even normal coffee mugs were too small. That’s why Alec needed his oversized cup. There was barely enough coffee in the day to get him through some of the bullshit he had to put up with. Small cups meant he had to take more trips to the coffee machine and couldn’t spend the day holed up in his office.

Before he headed back to his office, he grabbed a sheet of paper from the printer and scrawled a quick note to the mug thief.  _ I don’t know who you are but I will find you and you will pay. Return my coffee mug or else. _

He returned to his desk to work on a frustrating bit of code that refused to cooperate. Every single time he got up and walked to the coffee machine to find the note still there and his mug still missing, he got a little bit angrier. By the end of the day, he still hadn’t worked out the bug in his code and he was ready to punch someone. 

He almost felt bad for Jace when they went to the gym tonight. Almost. He was sure his brother probably did something to deserve what he would get though. He usually did.

The next morning he showed up and  _ prayed _ to whatever gods would listen that his threat had been received and his coffee mug had been returned. 

He was sorely disappointed.

His black mug was still missing but in its place was a regular-sized white with the Morton’s Salt logo and the words “Don’t Be A Salty Bitch” on them. He removed the mug to find a scrap of paper inside with the winking emoji. Alec scowled.

How dare they. 

He stared at the mug in his hand for another moment before pouring himself another cup of coffee in the shitty paper cups and grabbing another sheet of paper from the printer and leaving a note.  _ Very funny. Still waiting on the return of my mug. There will be consequences.  _

He took the Salty Bitch mug back to his office and left it on his bookshelf. He’d return the thief’s mug when they returned his. 

Unfortunately, the next day found a new mug in place of his missing mug. This one was simply white with black text that read ‘There’s no I in TEAM but there’s two in I do what I want.”

Fuck. He left another note ( _ This isn’t funny. I’m just trying to get work done. Just give me back my mug)  _ and went back to his desk. 

Unfortunately, he made the mistake of complaining to Simon, their head of IT, when the nerdy kid came upstairs to drop off the extra monitor he’d requested.

“I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to narrow it down, Alec,” Simon replied, though clearly amused by the entire situation. “There are only a handful of people who get to work in the morning before you. One of them has to be the culprit.”

He was right, however. Alec preferred to get here early so that he could leave early and spend the least amount of time around people as possible. It’s not that he didn’t  _ like _ his coworkers, it’s just that he found it next to impossible to get any work done when people were constantly stopping in and bugging him. (He’d even tried putting a sign on his door that read ‘If the building isn’t on fire, go away’ but HR hadn’t been a fan of that and had made him take it down after two painfully short days.)

He got there earlier the next day, hoping to catch the culprit in the act to find that he’d been beaten and there was another mug left for him. This one was black with the outline of a computer that read ‘Have you tried turning it off and back on again?’  _ Damn it.  _ He wasn’t even that sort of IT.

He’d gotten here a full half an hour earlier than he usually did. The building was almost empty. There were only two people upstairs - a nearly seventy-year-old man who was already half retired but hung around because he was one of the last people left in the company who still knew the ins and outs of some of their older programs and the cleaning lady. He had a feeling that neither of them was the mug thief. That meant either someone downstairs was to blame or there was foul magic at work. 

He scribbled another note ( _ All I want is my coffee) _ and received a mug with a kitten and the words ‘Hang in there!’ in response the next day. 

This continued for two weeks.  _ Fuck You _ was met with a yellow mug that said ‘I’m just a ray of fucking sunshine.’  _ Now you’ve gone too far _ brought a plain white mug with an angry face on it and  _ You must be a truly evil person _ had him finding one that said Evil Genius the next day. 

Alec’s shelf was beginning to get chaotically full. As much as he was beginning to enjoy the game (though he’d die before he admitted that to anyone,) he was starting to miss his once-a-day trips to the coffee pot.

He scrawled one last note -  _ What will it take for me to get my coffee mug back? _

He got to work an hour and a half earlier than normal the next morning. He and Jace had tried to go to the gym the night before only to find it closed due to a water leak. His brother had declared the entire night a lost cause and somehow had convinced him to go get ice cream and pastries from the shop on the corner instead. 

Alec was determined to still get his workout, so he’d woken up extra early and headed into work to use the gym at his office. About an hour into his workout, he heard a knock from the door and glanced up to see who was trying to get his attention.

Magnus Bane (the very pretty man from Creative Marketing that Alec had waxed poetic about on more than one occasion) was standing in the doorway, hip resting against the doorframe. He took a long, slow sip from the coffee mug he was holding. 

It was  _ Alec’s _ fucking mug. 

His brain slid to a stop and Alec may have misstepped. He most certainly didn’t end up falling and being rocketed off the back of the treadmill. That didn’t happen...and if it did, it was definitely not in front of Magnus Bane. 

“Oh fuck, Alec, are you okay?” Magnus quickly set his coffee on a chair by the door and rushed to help Alec up. “Anything broken?”

“My dignity,” Alec muttered, taking the offered hand and letting Magnus pull him off the floor. Oh shit, he definitely didn’t mean to say that. He cleared his throat and tried not to look too embarrassed. “Uh, hey Magnus - what’s up?”

Magnus smirked. “Well, you did ask what it would take for you to get your coffee mug back? I figured this one I would need to answer in person.”

_ Magnus _ had been the one to take his mug? And leave all the stupid ones in its place these past few weeks? “I’m listening.”

“How about a date Friday night? You, me, and that sushi bar in the little blue building right around the corner?”

Whatever Alec could have imagined Magnus asking for in return, that was definitely not what he expected. He’d wanted to ask Magnus out for months now, getting as far as asking his sister for advice (and really, that was the stupidest thing that he ever could have done, he’d learned his lesson) but he still hadn’t worked up the courage. 

Magnus had started a few months ago and Alec had had few conversations with him, but he’d instantly been enamored. Everyone else was so...normal and then along came Magnus all color and glitter and Alec couldn’t look away. 

Unfortunately, there was little chance of them seeing each other during the work day as Alec worked upstairs with the rest of the Dev team in the dark room that others jokingly referred to as the Cave. Magnus worked downstairs in the bright blue room with the life-sized tiger statue wearing a tutu and carpet straight out of a 90s arcade with the rest of the Marketing team. (He’d asked once about the decor choices and the guy from HR had just shrugged and said ‘that’s just the marketing department.’) Alec didn’t even know what Magnus actually  _ did. _ Hell, he didn’t know what anyone downstairs actually did. 

“Uh…” He wanted to say yes but his brain was finding it hard to say that a single word. 

“Feel free to say no, I’ll still return your coffee mug to you. I think I at least owe you that for the rather elegant faceplant you took a few minutes ago.”

“No! I mean, uh... Yes.  _ Yes. _ I’d like that very much. What time Friday?”

Magnus grinned and Alec felt his heart melt with the way his smile lit up the room. “Perfect! 8 PM? I’ll meet you there.”


End file.
